


Where Angels Fear to Tread

by PersephoneTree



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dark, Dark Magic, Dark One Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Gen, Murder, POV Multiple, The Enchanted Forest, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 13:35:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3251702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersephoneTree/pseuds/PersephoneTree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If we had known then what we do now, we would have driven them out."</p><p>The villagers' story of the end of the Ogre Wars and the rise of a new Dark One.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Angels Fear to Tread

 

            If we had known then what we do now, we would have driven them out.

            Of course we pitied him in the beginning. We had all felt what he was feeling: the loss looming like a tidal wave, the helplessness as our children were torn from us one by one. The weaver’s wife killed herself after they came for her only girl. No one blamed her. Most of us didn’t know why we bothered to go on living, waiting for reunions that could never be. No child ever came back from the war.

            Not until Rumplestiltskin.

            There was dancing in the streets the day he led them home. Baelfire spotted them before any other, and raced through the village from door to door, calling us out to see. We thought we were dreaming, but there they were. Our babies, exhausted and bloodied but victorious, still whole, still beautiful. They ran to us, laughing, and we held them and kissed their dirty faces and wept into their matted hair.

            He stood by all the while, queer eyes bright in his strange new face, Baelfire close at his side, beaming proudly. When the furor died down he gave a speech, declaring us free from our oppressors and himself our liberator, our protector. And we believed him.

            The children told us stories of his appearance on the battlefield: how he came down on the ogres’ host like a thunderstorm, how he swept through their ranks in a whirlwind of sharp blades and black magic and drove them howling into the hills. They called him a hero. We believed that too, and welcomed his presence among us.

            He was one of us, once. We thought he still was. We never thought we would have cause to fear him.

 

            The widow Thatcher was the first of us to die.

            Only a handful of us remember the inciting act, the throw that went awry or the sound of shattering glass, but none can forget what came after. The old widow strode from her house with the leather-skin ball clutched in the crook of one arm, glaring at the children in the road. Several scattered at her approach, out of guilt or fear. The widow was known to be an ill-tempered, impatient woman; her own son was years gone, dead on a battlefield somewhere, and grief and the drink had soured her.

            A crowd began to gather; our village had been a happy one in the weeks since the war’s end, and upsets were a rare and puzzling thing. The widow pointed an accusing finger at the front window of her hut, its panes like jagged teeth in a gaping mouth. “Who threw this? Whose ball is it? If you don’t tell me now you’ll all catch trouble!”

            “It’s mine.” Baelfire stepped forward, honest to a fault. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. We were just playing –”

            It happened so quickly. The boy had reached for his ball, still murmuring apologies, and the widow’s hand had gone up. We heard the crack of flesh striking flesh, and Baelfire stumbled back with a startled shriek.

            He had likely never been struck before in his life, poor child. Had we known, we would have driven them both away, but still we cannot blame the boy for crying out, or for what happened next.

            None of us could remember where he came from, that day; he seemed to have manifested out of smoke and shadow at the first sound of his son’s pain. Rumplestiltskin moved through the street like a warship, his finery rustling softly about him, and like water we parted to let him pass. He reached the boy and placed one hand on his shoulder, touched one to the small quivering chin. “Bae?”

            The miller was later heard to swear that he saw tears in the boy’s eyes, but most of us only remember the gentleness with which Rumplestiltskin turned his son’s face towards the light, and the dangerous stillness that came over him at the raw red mark spreading across Baelfire’s cheek. You can always feel a calm before a storm, the saying goes.

            Perhaps the widow did not sense it. “Your boy broke my window! Look there.” She pointed again. “It was his ball as did it. He confessed it himself.”

            “I told her I was sorry, Papa,” the boy whimpered.

            The widow sniffed. “Sorry, he says? Will ‘sorry’ fix my windowpane?”

            Slowly, so slowly, the creature who had once been our friend raised his strange face to the widow. “You hit him,” he said, in a voice that sizzled like white-hot iron.

            “He broke my window!” she insisted. “Who’s going to pay for that?”

            “ _You. Hurt. My. Boy!_ ”

            The last word became a strangled howl of outrage. In one fluid movement, the creature raised both hands towards the widow and twisted them sharply in the air.

            “Papa, no!” But it was too late, and Baelfire’s cry was lost in the sudden, violent sound of human bones breaking.

 

            We buried what was left of the widow in the potter’s field at midnight. We did not dare touch the wretched thing in the daylight, for fear that he would see and condemn us for caring. The bloodstains we covered over with dirt and stamped on, so our children would be spared the sight in the morning.

            Since then he has grown less messy, more playful. He retaliates more artfully now, especially in his son’s presence, and there are fewer burials. But our numbers dwindle even so.

            Those of us that remain have learned caution. We give him the best of our harvests, our goods and our coin to ensure his contentment. Our wives urge our children inside when he walks out. We stay out of his way, as much as we can, and when we cannot…

            We try not to tread on snails or insects, these days.

            If only we had known.


End file.
